New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and th...
Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, "Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden ma...
Anders M. Greene-Crow, "Austerity Measures: The Poetics of Food Insecurity in Early Modern English Literature" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Anders M. Greene-Crow. Anders teaches at the Woods College of Advancing Studies and is a former Professor of English at Boston Colle...
Victoria Basualdo et al., "Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel, I spoke with Dr. Victoria Basualdo and Dr. Marcelo Bucheli about their new edited book. ...
Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of t...
Nicholas Birman Trickett, "Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia" (Hurst, 2025)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia (Hurst, 2025) traces how Russian economic policy precipitated the country’s slide towards a...
Angela C. Tozer, "The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820-73" (U of British Columbia Press, 2025)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: La...
Mariya Grinberg, "Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines" (Cornell UP, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Ye...
Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025)
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series a...
Shennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019)
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard? Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South. Shennette Garrett-Scott's n...
Steve L. Monroe, "Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World" (Cornell UP, 2025)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and socia...
Mary Bridges on US Bankers Abroad and the Making of a Global Superpower
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International...
Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman w...
Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholes...
Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position ...
Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charly Coleman's latest book, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021) is at...
Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025)
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class America...
Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers are Changing the World
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We all have the power to change the world through the products we buy. This simple premise has driven the growth of the conscious consumer movement fo...
Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that E...
Ahmad Shokr, "Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025)
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Harvests of Liberation offers a critical reinterpretation of Egypt’s path to decolonization through the lens of its most important export crop: cot...
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...
Ronald C. Po, "Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties" (Liverpool UP, 2024)
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Liverpool UP, 2024) offers a vivid look at China's dynamic and longstanding ...
Toby Lincoln, "An Urban History of China" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In An Urban History of China (Cambridge UP, 2021), Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despit...
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2025)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating th...
Paul Vigna, "The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and W...
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of ...
Jennifer Bess, "Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin" (U Colorado Press, 2021)
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin (UP of Colorado, 2021) is no...
Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics ...
Daniel Morales, "Between Here and There: The Political Economy of Transnational Mexican Migration, 1900-1942" (Oxford UP, 2024)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between Here and There is the first history of the creation of modern US-Mexico migration patterns narrated from multiple geographic and institutiona...
Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twe...
Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise" (Yale UP, 2022)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a tho...
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roa...
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and ...
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and ...
Ford to City: Drop Dead
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On October 30, 1975, the New York Daily News printed the most famous headline in its history: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The previous day, Preside...
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it goin...
Michael John Witgen, "Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America" (UNC Press, 2021)
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining much of their land in the Old Northwest—what’s now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnes...
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learnin...
David Engerman, "Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made" (Oxford UP and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025)
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made (Oxford University Press and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025) by Dr. David Enger...
Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created...
Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover ...
John Nott, "Between Feast Famine: Food, Health, and the History of Ghana's Long Twentieth Century" (UCL Press, 2025)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ghana’s twentieth century was one of dramatic political, economic, and environmental change. Sparked initially by the impositions of colonial rule, ...
Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, "Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, o...
Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious chan...
Susan L. Carruthers, "Making Do: Britons and the Refashioning of the Postwar World" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Ei...
Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalit...
Mara Einstein, "Hoodwinked: How Cult Marketing Tactics Left Us Anxious, Broke, and Conned" (Prometheus Books, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mara Einstein sees the future of marketing as increasingly intertwined with manipulative tactics that mirror those used by cults, especially as advert...
Didi Kuo, "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't" (Oxford UP, 2025)
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford Universi...
Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austi...
Paul Tucker, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton UP, 2024)
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle? Can the international economic and legal system survive t...
Heather Sutherland, "Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, C.1600-c.1906" (NUS Press, 2021)
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The eastern archipelagos stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of their inhabitan...
Matthew Wisnioski on the History of the Idea and Culture of “Innovation” in the United States
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Wisnioski, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, about his new book, Eve...
Sarah Bull, "Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between medicine and commerce? In Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain (Cambrid...
Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (Univ of California Press, 2025)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, an...
Ian Kumekawa, "Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge" (Knopf, 2025)
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany hav...
Yasmine Motawy, "Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society" (AUC Press, 2025)
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they a...
Prithwiraj Choudhury, "The World Is Your Office: How Work from Anywhere Boosts Talent, Productivity, and Innovation" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the debate around remote versus in-office work rages on, leaders in a wide range of industries continue to implement radically flexible work practi...
Emily Webber, "Mining Men: Britain's Last Kings of the Coalface" (Penguin, 2025)
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the last generation of British miners: fathers and sons, brothers and comrades, big hitters and broken men, strikers and scabs. Mining M...
John H. Cochrane, Klaus Masuch, and Luis Garicano, "Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro" (Princeton UP, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro (Princeton UP, 2025) John Cochrane Luis Garicano Klaus Masuch PRINCETON UNIVER...
Mark Somos, Matthew Cleary, Pablo Dufour, Edward Jones Corredera, and Emanuele Salerno, "The Unseen History of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine ...
Mary A. Armstrong and Susan L. Averett, "Disparate Measures: The Intersectional Economics of Women in STEM Work" (MIT Press, 2024)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An exploration of workplace participation and earnings patterns for diverse women in US STEM professions that upends the myth that STEM work benefits ...
L. Sasha Gora, "Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada" (University of Toronto Press, 2025)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2025) by Dr. L. Sasha Gora explores the complex relationships...
Rita McGrath, "Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen" (Harper Business, 2019)
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen by Rita Gunther McGrath Inflection points, as discussed first b...
Women as Economic Actors: New Sources, Theories, and Methods
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the JESB podcast, we focus on a landmark special issue: “Women as Economic Actors: New Sources, Theories, and Methods” (Vol. 10...
Charles A. O'Reilly, III and Michael L. Tushman, "Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma, Second Edition" (Stanford Business Books, 2021)
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma Second Edition 2nd Edition by Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman The second ed...
Fernando Pérez-Montesinos, "Landscaping Indigenous Mexico: The Liberal State and Capitalism in the Purépecha Highlands" (U Texas Press, 2025)
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fernando Pérez-Montesinos's first book, Landscaping Indigenous Mexico: The Liberal State and Capitalism in the Purépecha Highlands (University of ...
Coll Thrush, "Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific" (University of Washington Press, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as th...
Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America" (NYU Press, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to ...
Joshua K. Wright, "The NBA's Global Empire: How the League Became an International Powerhouse" (McFarland, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua K. Wright, The NBA's Global Empire: How the League Became an International Powerhouse (McFarland, 2025) During the 1992 Summer Olym...
Amit Ron and Abraham A. Singer, "Everyone's Business: What Companies Owe Society" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The ethics of the company in a highly politicized time. Businesses are increasingly social actors. They fund political campaigns, take stances on soci...
John Horn, "Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success" (MIT Press, 2023)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success (MIT Press, 2023) offers a roadmap to help leaders...
Gennifer Weisenfeld, "The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In ...
Xing Hang, "The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan...
Julia McClure, "Empire of Poverty: The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire" (Oxford UP, 2025)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Empire of Poverty: The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Julia McClure examines how changing conce...
Chris Aslan, "Unravelling the Silk Road: Travels and Textiles in Central Asia" (Icon Books, 2024)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Silk Road may be the most famous trade network in history. But the flow of silk from China to the Middle East and Europe isn’t the only textile ...
Charles Hecker, "Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia" (Oxford UP, 2025)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I interviewed Charles Hecker about Zero Sum. The Arc of International Business in Russia (Oxford UP, 2025). Hecker, a journalist and busine...
Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid ...
Alex Davies, "Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car" (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (Simon & Schuster, 2022), Alex Davies tells the enlightening and significant story of the effort ...
Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most child...
Nicholas Borst, "The Bird and the Cage: China’s Economic Contradictions" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025)
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese Communist Party’s complex and contradictory embrace of capitalism has played a pivotal role in shaping China’s economic reforms since ...
Tim Minshall, "How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing" (Ecco, 2025)
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book from Cambridge University Professor Tim Minshall provides an enlightening view of how the world of manufacturing world has an immense influe...
Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...
Jody Benjamin, "The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850" (Ohio UP, 2024)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broa...
Aviva Briefel, "Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism" (Cornell UP, 2025)
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Aviva Briefel argues that Victoria...
Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingd...
Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024)
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the constructi...
Ben Jackson, "Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England" (Manchester UP, 2025)
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Ben Jackson examines the material and ...
Júlia Király, "Hungary and Other Emerging EU Countries in the Financial Storm: From Minor Troubles to Global Hurricane" (Springer, 2020)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump is putting liberal democracy through its greatest test in 80 years. None of it is original. His style of rule is straight from the de...
False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and ...
Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...
Stuart Ward, "Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Professor Stuart War...
Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil libe...
Brendan Haug, "Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm (University of Michigan Press, 2024) is the first environmental history ...
Globalization's Backlash: Echoes of the Interwar Era in Today’s World
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey interviews historian Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass ...
William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the Universi...
Tupur Chatterjee, "Projecting Desire: Media Architectures and Moviegoing in Urban India" (NYU Press, 2025)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the late 1990s, the multiplex in India has emerged as a dominant site of media exhibition, almost always embedded within the shopping mall. This...
David de Jong, "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties" (Mariner Books, 2022)
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nazi Billionnaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties (Mariner Books, 2022), journalist David de Jong presents a groundbreaking ...
Maïa Pal, "Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With rigorous attention to history and empire, Maïa Pal's Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambr...
Darryl Campbell, "Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software" (W. W. Norton, 2025)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix. Software was supposed to radically improve society. Ou...
Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian, "The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform" (Yale UP, 2024)
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, asserting his control of China 15 years later, Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up ...